Macclesfield / London 1980

There's an interesting coincidence regarding your great film Stroszek. Reading about the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in the book Touching from a Distance we learn that he watched Stroszek before killing himself. While reading Faber's Lynch on Lynch, David Lynch talks about being in the UK filming The Elephant Man and seeing Stroszek on TV. Curtis and Lynch appear to have been watching the transmission of the same film at the same time. Although it's a huge simplification, the reactions of the two viewers appear to swing between a complete enchantment of life and self-destruction. Do you find this reveals something about your work?

Werner Herzog It is a very heavy question. There is no frivolity in answering this. I cannot really argue. It is as it is. I wish this singer was still alive and hadn't seen Stroszek at that moment. But deep at the bottom of my heart I do believe that Stroszek was not the reason that he killed himself. I do believe that he must have had some very, very serious deeper other reasons and he may have, and I'm very cautious, he may have used the film as a ritual step into what he was doing. Regarding David Lynch when he was doing Elephant Man, which is a wonderful film, I do not know. I actually know David Lynch personally and I should speak to him and ask him. There's no real answer to that question, only regret that a young man committed suicide. That's a fact that is sad which is very, very serious and is very disquieting.

BBC Four This is a more light-hearted question.

Piers What became of all the grey rats you used in Nosferatu?

Werner Herzog We sold them and even made some profit!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/ask-herzog.shtml

Atascadero, 1985

REPORTER: Dan Rather (Atascadero, California) Champion race horse Boitron's severe injury and Washington State Univ. veterinarians' efforts to cure him examined; films shown, background to report explained. [Dr. Barrie GRANT - notes medical problems facing him.] Boitron's role on stud farm now, with artificial leg, described. [Rancher Barbara WILLIAMS - praises horse.]

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1985-3/1985-03-28-CBS-21.html

Innsbruck, 1490

In 1490, Kaiser Maximilian I awarded Franz von Taxis the contract to deliver mail between the Kaiser’s residences in Innsbruck and Brussels. He did such a good job, that postal services in the country continue to be connected with the name Thurn and Taxis. With the introduction of postal carriages in the middle of the 17th century, members of the family were raised to Count status and given the hereditary title of Postmaster General. The game begins at this point in history.
Can you emulate the achievements of this family and build a successful postal network? Do you have the talent to connect the right cities to create an effective network and not lose sight of the need to acquire new carriages when they are needed? Plan your moves carefully and watch your opponents’ moves carefully, so you are prepared to respond to them.
The game takes you back in time and gives you challenges that will bring you back to the game over and over.

http://www.funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=015680

Watertown, 1968

Of course, when it comes to one-book authors, none resonates for me as deeply as Frederick Exley, whose "fictional memoir" A Fan’s Notes came out in 1968. As for why this is … well, Exley was a particularly unlikely literary hero, the most implausible writer in the bunch. Born on March 28, 1929 in Watertown, New York, he was an alcoholic who spent much of his life as an unregenerate freeloader, writing sporadically when at all. His relationships, including two brief marriages, were disastrous, and for many years he didn’t even have an apartment, but rotated among friends and relations as a semi-permanent guest.Exley’s inability to function as an adult extended to his inner self, which relied on several external figures—including his father, Earl, and the critic Edmund Wilson—to provide some semblance of definition, as if through their successes, his own lack of accomplishment might be redeemed. Of these personalities, none was more significant than Frank Gifford, whom Exley first encountered at the University of Southern California in the early 1950s, and became obsessed with after moving to Manhattan, where Gifford was a star football player for the New York Giants. As Exley explains in A Fan’s Notes, "I cheered for him with such inordinate enthusiasm … that after a time he became my alter ego, that part of me which had its being in the competitive world of men … Each time I heard the roar of the crowd, it roared in my ears as much for me as for him."In many ways, A Fan’s Notes represents Exley’s one great moment of triumph, a rigorously reflective piece of autobiographical writing that eclipses the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, using the author’s imagined relationship with Gifford as a fulcrum from which to examine "that long malaise, my life." The book received the William Faulkner Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. That A Fan’s Notes exists at all is nothing short of astonishing, for while Exley spent years fantasizing about being a writer, he had done little of substance before it came out.Yet equally remarkable is the depth to which Exley reveals himself, baring his inadequacies until, beneath the refining filter of revelation, they are transformed. It’s ironic that a book about failure would represent, for its author, the pinnacle of success, as it is that in his explication of fanhood, Exley would turn the spotlight, finally, towards himself. Perhaps the greatest irony, though, is that, ultimately, A Fan’s Notes did little to alter Exley’s life. In the years after its appearance, he taught briefly at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and wrote two additional "novels," Pages from a Cold Island and Last Notes from Home, that complete the trilogy A Fan’s Notes begins. Still, he remained a drunk and a layabout, and even before he died of a stroke on June 17, 1992, he had been largely forgotten, along with his work.

http://www.swinkmag.com/ulin.html